Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

The Sting That Has India Writhing

The brash young journalist threw his feet up on the desk and leaned back in his chair, ready to tell how he had concocted an identity for himself as a slick arms merchant from London, gone undercover with a hidden camera and wound up shaking India's political and military establishment to its roots.

His tale of how he caught bureaucrats, politicians and generals taking wads of cash on videotape would seem like a cross between slapstick and farce if it were not having such unfunny consequences for the ruling coalition.

Today, India's powerful defense minister, George Fernandes, resigned under pressure and Jaya Jaitley, president of the party they both belong to, stepped down. Mamata Banerjee, another ally of the ruling coalition, afraid that the bribery scandal would damage her prospects in coming elections in West Bengal, quit the government in disgust.

And members of the opposition, who had grown morosely resigned to the stability of the government, came to the majestic Parliament building this morning with a spring in their steps. In the pandemonium on the floor, they chatted animatedly, chuckled gleefully and, when the speaker appeared on the dais, rushed gaily to the well to force an adjournment for the second day in a row.

''This has been like a godsend,'' said Kapil Sibal, an opposition Congress Party legislator. ''This government came to power as the only party that believed in morality. The morality plank is over. The sheen is lost. And people now say these guys are worse than any before!''

For out-of-power politicians, corruption may be good news, but for most Indians it is the bane of public life. Scandals have come so fast and thick recently, and in so many walks of life, it can be hard to keep track of them all.

They have ranged across the film lots of Bollywood, the pitches of fixed cricket matches and the backrooms of the Bombay Stock Exchange. They brought tragedy in Gujarat, where high-rises shoddily built with the connivance of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats collapsed in Ahmedabad, killing hundreds.

And this most recent scandal has now touched off a political crisis for the many-headed coalition government that rules this nation of a billion people. Many citizens in this, the world's most populous democracy have glared at the grainy video snippets on television, transfixed by the sight of hands reaching out greedily for stacks of rupees and the sound of loot crinkling as it brushes past hidden microphones.

''Dubious tapes accumulated by dubious characters'' is how Ms. Jaitley, president of the Samata Party, dismissively referred to the tapes.

She resigned today because of her incriminating appearance in a Web site documentary accepting cash for her party from a reporter at the official residence of Mr. Fernandes. He was not caught on videotape, but he was politically compromised by her actions.

These ''spy cam'' movies were shot on a shoestring by two journalists at a nine-month-old Internet magazine, tehelka.com. Appropriately, tehelka means sensation in Hindi.

Many Indian newspapers have questioned the reporters' decision to lie about who they were over a period of eight months and to fabricate an elaborate cover story that had them representing a ''fictitious company flogging nonexistent thermal imaging binoculars,'' as their Web site so pithily put it.

But virtually all the magazine's journalistic competition, like The Times of India, concluded that the issue of ethics ''pales before the sleaze their team has dug up.''

The investigation was the brainchild of Aniruddha Bahal, 34, one of three promoters who created tehelka.com last May. He had already used the sting techniques on a cricket match-fixing investigation that helped launch tehelka.

He plunged into the murky world of corrupt defense deals in August. And since a selection of the video highlights, as well as a 140-page transcript of the taped conversations, were released on Tuesday, Mr. Bahal's latest investigation has brought tehelka.com a bonanza of attention.

''It's huge,'' he said. ''It's branded us forever. What took The New York Times 100 years, we've done in a year.''

Mr. Bahal had become a television commentator during the match-fixing scandal, so he picked Mathew Samuel, in his late 20's, to be the main undercover face for the military spending project.

They started at the bottom of the corruption food chain, working their way up into a network of military officers, politicians, bureaucrats and fixers -- many of whom seemed interested in making some money for themselves or their political parties.

The reporters, operating on the cheap, strung along the bribe-takers with small down payments on the big promised pay day. When they courted their sources in the private rooms of five-star hotels, they took their own liquor to avoid the markups. (The final bill for payoffs was about $23,000.)

Some of their sources did not want bribes, at least not right away. Maj. Gen. Manjit Singh Ahluwalia, director general quality assurance, demanded the best Scotch -- Blue not Black Label -- and clued them in on how the system worked, especially when deals worth tens of millions of rupees -- called crores in India -- were at stake.

''If you come to my house to meet me on Diwali,'' the Hindu holiday, he said, ''you can't talk without bringing Blue Label. If you are talking of bloody making a couple of crores of rupees, you can't give me bloody Black Label also. Isn't it? Let's be very clear about it.''

General Ahluwalia went on to explain at great and colorful length that there are many people with their hand out for a cut as they move your deal toward completion, perhaps 20, say, at the second stage of the procurement process.

''It's a massive bloody system,'' the general said. ''There is no place for friends. There is no place for singleton. It requires very deep pockets.'' And he warned them to be ready to buy off the obstructionists. ''A lot of people have nuisance value,'' he said. ''I may not be able to do anything. I might not be able to help you, but I can ruin it. That man has got nuisance value. That nuisance value has to be compensated.''

On Tuesday, the tehelka team gave television news channels video of Bangaru Laxman, president of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party, taking stacks of 100 rupee notes worth $2,175 that he said would go to the party coffers -- and asking that further payments be made in dollars.

That video cost Mr. Laxman his job. But in further video released tonight, Mr. Laxman implicates not just himself, but Brajesh Mishra, the national security adviser to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and perhaps the most powerful bureaucrat in the nation.

Mr. Bahal, the tehelka journalist, tells the party president on the video that Mr. Mishra is standing in the way of their thermal camera deal and is strongly supporting another company. Mr. Bahal says his company is ready to pay a 4 percent to 5 percent ''political commission'' on the deal.

''So far, we have been taking the help of Brajesh Mishra to organize this,'' Mr. Laxman then informs the journalist.

Many Indians have watched the tehelka spectacle. Rajesh Dubey, a sales representative, and Ajay Jain, a bank accounts officer, are among them. They sat in the warm afternoon sun on Connaught Place today, trying to figure out why Mr. Laxman had settled for such a small bribe.

''There must be more money later,'' Mr. Jain said. ''That first money must just be token money. I'm absolutely sure.''